


Wedding Night

by nothingeverlost



Series: The World is Enough (Renbelle) [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), World Is Not Enough (1999)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 08:09:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingeverlost/pseuds/nothingeverlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There’s always been one man’s touch that makes me want for more.”  She dared to close the distance between them, and to reach up and touch his face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wedding Night

**Author's Note:**

> My Renbelle so far has taken place either during her first kidnapping or a few years later when he learns that he has a daughter. This is the middle time. Similar to the movie (TWINE) Belle is ‘rescued’ from her kidnapping and Renard is shot by MI-6. This picks up a year later.
> 
> Oh, readers might recognize two lines I stole from my first ever Renard drabble. It fit too well to resist.
> 
> Warnings: Smut, specifically of the first time variety. Also mentions of physical abuse.

She found the note inside the book under her pillow. It was written on the back of one of her wedding invitations, and only signed with a V, but she knew his handwriting. More, she knew him.

_If this is what you want, do nothing. If it is not your choice, hang something blue in your window tomorrow. -V_

She slipped out of bed to hang her favorite blue dress from the window frame, and fell asleep without the knot in her stomach for the first time in a month.

Two mornings later as her maids dressed her in her wedding dress she was afraid it had been a dream. Every step she took was one closer to the altar and the man her father had chosen to be her husband. He had barely touched her; the cool dark businessman who was always so polite, but watched her with eyes that she could not read. Tonight she would be in his bed, and the thought made her want to throw up.

When the limo came to a screeching halt and the doors were yanked open she almost sobbed in relief. They were still miles from the church. She did not recognize any of the men, but she did not struggle when she felt her dress rip as they pulled her out of the car. She only protested when one man aimed his gun at the driver. 

“He’s a good man. Please. He has children.” They aimed their guns at the tires instead. Belle did not care; her father could replace the tires or the whole limo without blinking.

“Where are we going?” she asked when she was in a van with four guards. None of them seemed inclined to answer. Belle played with her fingers and thanked god that she was heading anywhere except to her wedding.

They drove for hours, stopping only once for food and to use a toilet. It had not been easy; the dress had been put on by three maids, and was not designed to allow her to do anything on her own. Even going to the bathroom was difficult.

Her ears popped as the van climbed the roads into the mountains. It was late afternoon when they finally stopped in front of what looked like a large hunting lodge. Belle was escorted with a man on either side of her; she would have run if the dress had not weighed her down.

“Leave us.” She heard his voice before she saw him. The curtains in the room were drawn, the corner where he stood was cloaked in shadows. Two words, not even directed at her, but they made her want to cry. It had been almost a year since she had been ‘rescued’ by MI6 and returned to her father’s house, and every day she had ached to hear his voice.

“Victor.” She took three steps towards him, and he took one into the deeper shadows.

“White does not suit you.” She’d listened to Russian movies on YouTube in secret, when missing him had threatened to overwhelm her. It had never been right, the language not making up for the timber of his voice. Her memory was imperfect, or he sounded a little different than he had.

“It’s the proper color for a virginal sacrifice.” She hadn’t been home a week before her papa had started talking of eligible men. That she’d been able to hold him off for a year had been a small miracle. “Papa wanted it to be clear to the world that his little girl was still pure and untouched.”

“It makes you look as if you’re carved from marble. Not only untouched, but untouchable.” She might have thought he was the man who had first kidnapped her, but there was a hint of wistfulness in his voice. He would deny the emotion.

He had missed her, and that knowledge made her brave enough to move closer to him. “I’m still flesh, even though I’ve spent a year wishing I wasn’t. Stone would have been preferable to knowing what was meant to happen tonight.”

“No man will touch you.” His voice was sharp enough to be a weapon. She might have been scared, but he was Victor. He had killed men in front of her, but he had never touched her with anything less than gentleness.

“One man, I hope. There’s always been one man’s touch that makes me want for more.” She dared to close the distance between them, and to reach up and touch his face.

“That man does not exist anymore.” He stepped to the side, just a single step but it was enough to cast light on his features.

Belle gasped.

“They are nothing but an outward sign of inward ugliness.” Renard laughed bitterly as he stepped backwards, breaking the connection of her hands on his face. His scars. They were healed, but still an angry red at his right temple and at the corner of his eye. Paler scars along his cheek made his mouth appear to be turned down, a permanent frown. His eyelid drooped, half covering one of the eyes that watched her so carefully. She could not read them.

“Does it hurt?” The scar at his temple was the one that looked the worst, but she could not reach it easily. Instead she kissed the one on his upper lip and furiously blinked away the tears he would not want to see.

“I feel nothing.” His breath was warm against her cheek.

“No pain.” Belle nodded her head, relieved. Victor was not a vain man, the scars would not bother him. It was the idea of him in pain that she could not bear, that he might have spent nights unable to sleep for the ache. Nights that she had not been with him, as he’d recovered.

“No, I feel nothing. No pain nor pleasure, heat nor cold. I do not even feel your lips on my skin.”

“I don’t understand.” He had to feel something; everyone did. If he could not feel her kiss then she just needed to kiss him in a place that was not scarred. Belle blushed as she thought about where she could kiss him, places she had never even seen on a man. The only guide she had was her books and her feelings.

“There is a bullet slowly making its way through my brain, a gift from our British friends.” He touched the vivid red scar at his temple. Belle flinched. She had not imagined that it had been left by a bullet. “Someday it will kill me. Until then it is slowly stripping me of my senses. I can see your touch, but I can not feel it.”

“No. No. There has to be something that can be done.” To love him and not be with him had been pain, but loving him and knowing that he was carrying the thing that would kill him was a hell worse than anything she had felt. “A doctor…”

“Can do nothing. They say that I am lucky to be alive now. They are fools.” The darkness in her eyes warned her that asking for answers might lead to hearing things that she did not want to know.

“I don’t believe it. There has to be someone, somewhere. There has to be an answer.” She pleaded with him, with the god of her childhood, with anyone that might listen.

“It does not matter if I can feel.” There was a harshness to him that she had seen, but never so closely. He had always been more careful with her.

“It matters if you live.” Knowing that he would hate her tears did not stop them from falling. All she could do was hide them in kissing him, her mouth hard and insistent against his. She did not think about the fact that he could not feel her need, her desperation. 

“You are as foolish as the doctors, to care if I live or die. What is one less monster in this world?”

“You are not a monster. You saved me, today.” Outside the mostly closed curtains she could see the sun was setting. If today had been the day her father had planned she would be on her way to a private yacht, to spend her first night as a man’s wife. His prized possession.

She would have been completely at his mercy.

“I would give you the world. I am a rich man, and can have you taken anywhere you like, far enough that your father will not know how to find you.”

“If you were going to send me away why bring me here at all?” She could not leave, not knowing that she wouldn’t see him again. She understood that he would only be found when he allowed it, and he would not allow it again. This was her one chance, and she would not let it go so easily.

“I am a selfish man, and demand one last look…”

“You can not demand something so freely given.” He had missed her. It soothed the ache a little, knowing that she had meant something to him, that it wasn’t a figment of her imagination. For a year her psychiatrist, father, and fiancee had been doing their best to convince her that she’d been nothing but lost profit to Renard.

“May I demand something as well, Victor?” Do the brave thing, she kept telling herself. She had a year of regrets to live with already. They had kissed, and he had held her, but she had wanted more and been afraid. She would not allow it this time.

“You would make demands, malyishka?” His hand at the back of her neck might had commandeered her attention if he didn’t already have it. “The little bird has learned to use her claws.”

“Someone taught me, not so long ago, that I do not have to fill the role others want for me. I can chose my own fate.” She had so rarely dared to question her father, before. She had obeyed him, her governesses, the priests.

“And you would choose my fate as well?” He could not feel. She had to wonder if he was even aware of his thumb brushing against her jawline. He could not be aware of the courage it lent her.

“Never that.” Belle shook her head. “I only demand that you listen to my request. Your choice is your own, just promise you will think before you answer.”

“I will give my word.”

“Tonight…” Belle licked her lips, telling herself that she could make her request. “It would have been my wedding night, my first time with a man. I didn’t chose him. I want that, at least. Whatever else happens, I want to know that I had that much.”

“You can chose to go anyplace, and have any man you wish.” His hand dropped from her neck and he turned away from her. She understood that if he had the ability he would vanish completely.

“I don’t want any man. I want the one I’ve dreamed of for a year.” She rested her head against his back, between his shoulders. She could almost hear his heartbeat. Maybe it was her own. “If you are going to make me go away from you, let me have this first. One night, Victor.”

“Nyet.” His answer was immediate and unrelenting. Under her touch he was a brick wall, unforgiving.

“Please. You never have to see me again after tomorrow. I’ll disappear. Just…”

“Do you think I would let you go? If I had you for one night you would be mine, and I would never let another man touch you. You would be shackled to a dying man.” She barely had a chance to breathe before she found herself against the wall, a hand on each of her shoulders pinning her like a moth to a board. “This is not a life anyone would chose.”

“You are the only person who has given me a choice. Let me be the one to decide.” Her bravado lasted only moments before she dropped her gaze, looking down at the wedding dress that had been meant for another man. “Unless you don’t want me. Maybe you never did.”

“You foolish girl.” A sob escaped her throat as he kissed her, his lips almost bruising against hers. It was something harsher and deeper than the kisses they had shared a year ago.

“Your room?” she asked softly, relieved that her voice did not tremble.

“You deserve something more.” The room he led her to was spartan, without even a rug on the floor to soften the look. The walls were white, the windows blocked with yellowing shades, and there was nothing more colorful than the solid blue comforter on the bed.

The bed she’d asked to share with him.

She’d never done more than kiss a man before. “You are my something more.”

“I remember how soft your skin is.” His fingertips stroked her throat, so gently it should have tickled. Laughing was the last thing on her mind. “Everything about you is soft.”

“Not my scars.” It had been difficult, to find a wedding dress that had covered her back but had met with her father’s approval. He had wanted her on display to the world; there would have been pictures in the magazine of the wealthy oil heiress at the minor Spanish royal.

“Even them.” His hand moved lower, to the swell of her breasts above the jeweled bodice of the gown. Each touch left a path of heat across her skin.

“You can’t feel anything?” He was so gentle, it did not seem possible. She did not want it to be possible.

“I can see your pale skin against my rough hands. I can hear the hitch in your voice when you try to breathe normally. I can smell the shampoo you used to wash your hair; rose petals and vanilla. But I can not feel you.” A single finger dipped past the neckline of her dress. Belle shivered at the friction of his callused pad against her sensitive skin. The dress was designed to accent her curves, or create ones that did not naturally exist, and she was bound tightly by a corset under her clothes, leaving some places almost numb and some overly sensitive.

“I can feel you, even in places you are not touching. My skin is humming.” Her heart was racing as well, excitement and nervousness. And fear, but she tried her best to ignore that. She didn’t fear him, and refused to let fear of the unknown deter her.

“There will be pain, Belle. I can do nothing to alter that fact.” He held her chin in one hand, his eyes searching hers.

“I have read books; I know what to expect.” She licked her lower lip, and hoped that he took it as invitation and not nerves.

“Somehow I doubt your books have prepared you for this, golubushka.” He kissed the back of her neck as he circled around her. She could not see him, but felt his fingers against her scalp and the relief as pins holding her hair into place were released.

“I know the difference between books and reality. Life does not have a happy ending.” She shifted a little, eyes going wide in the realization that her panties felt slightly damp; it was too soon for her period.

“You are too young to be so cynical.” The weight pressing down on her tightened as he pulled at the cords that held her dress closed. Renard snarled at the knot that did not give with his attempted manipulation. “You have no great attachment to this dress?”

“I hate it.” Belle tried to look over her shoulder, but could not see anything more than the flash of metal. Only moments later the dress fell to the ground, the cording sliced cleanly apart by the blade of a knife. She’d seen him with the switchblade before; he carried it in his pocket. He’s used it to dig a splinter from her hand, to cut a steak, and to stab a man. Now he used it to free her from the symbol of an unwanted marriage.

She was still bound by the corset. It was no easier to breathe, but at least the weight of the dress was off her. Belle stood completely still, not daring to try and see his reaction to her as she stood in only her underthings. Everything was as white as the dress; the corset, lace panties, and the stockings. And the shoes, of course. They were two inches higher than what she usually wore, and she’d almost fallen more than once today.

“Even more beautiful than I had imagined.” Now that the dress was no longer between them, she could feel the heat of his body against her back, her legs, and her arms as he slowly moved his hands from her shoulders to wrists. “Once as a young boy I picked a rose from a garden, where it sparkled in the morning sun from the drops of dew on the petals. It was the most beautiful thing until the act of being uprooted made it wither and die.”

“The rose left alone on the bush would have died as well, but it would have been alone.” Belle closed her eyes and leaned back against his shoulder, trusting him to catch her if the shoes made her too unsteady. “There are so many ways to be alone, even in the midst of a hundred people.”

“I would not allow you to wither.” She might have asked him what he meant, except that teeth scraped against the side of her neck and she couldn’t think of anything.

“Victor,” she moaned, a shudder traveling through her body. His hand cupping her breast was almost too much; she knew there was so much more, and wasn’t sure how she would cope.

“I would see you.” The corset fastened in the front. Belle looked down, biting her lower lip, and reached for the first hook.

“No.” She didn’t have time to hold onto him when he picked her up, carrying her to the bed. He held her for long enough to pull back the blanket before laying her down, sitting beside her. His fingers touched the first hook. 

“I have had this fantasy often enough. Undressing you. Seeing your skin revealed by my hand. I would not deny myself.” The first hook undone wasn’t enough to show anything. Belle took a deep breath and waited as his fingers worked on the second. She knew that his experience with other women was greater than her own with men. She had nothing to compare him to, but he could find her wanting. The corset made her breasts seem bigger than they were, and her stomach flatter. It hid most of her scars, though at least those were on her back and if she remained as she was he would not see them. Perhaps he did not even remember them. 

Once the corset was gone he would see almost all of her. Only scant pieces of lace would remain. “Will I see you as well?”

“If that is what you wish.” The third hook was undone. The fourth. She could breathe easier, if she could breathe at all. The corset had slipped down far enough that he could touch her nipples. Belle watched in confusion as one puckered as it did when she was cold and rushing to change and get in bed.

“I wish. Sometimes you would train with your men and you wouldn’t have your shirt on. I wanted to touch you.” He was not without his own scars; she wanted to kiss them. He would not feel her touch, but that did not change the desire. “Sometimes late at night I would think about what it would be like, to touch you.”

“Did you touch yourself, when you thought of touching me?” Three hooks in quick succession, and the corset fell open. His hand cupped one breast, his tanned skin making her own skin seem almost white.

“That’s a sin.” She pressed her lips together and couldn’t meet his eyes. This was a sin too, according to the priests. They were not married. She was meant to submit to her husband, and remain chaste until he claimed her. And yet her heart disagreed. She loved Victor. She’d never loved another man, and if she was to give herself to someone she wanted it to be him.

“A great many things are sinful. Harming an innocent is far worse than bringing oneself pleasure.” Belle gasped as his hand slid between the bed and her back. He remembered her scars. There were places she could feel his fingers, where the scarring was thickest. She took a deep breath; everywhere she touched him was like that. “I would kill them, if I ever learned their names.”

“They’re gone. I haven’t seen them in years.” The scars on her back were from her teenage years, though the lessons they’d been intended to inflict were ones she still fought. She could overcome them. “I did, sometimes. Touch myself. When it ached too much and I was…” Even being all but bared to him, it was difficult talking about such things.

“Wet?” he whispered in her ear, his face so close she couldn’t make out his features anymore. One hand was flat against her back, cradling her. The other rested against her lace panties. She’d never felt so protected before. Or so nervous. “Are you wet now, little one?”

Belle nodded, her cheek brushing his. But he could not feel her, she remembered. “I am. More than I remember being, when I was alone.”

“That is good. I do not want to hurt you, not any more than is necessary. That has never been my intention.” She knew he spoke of more than the pain to come.

“I trust you.” She tilted her head enough to kiss him, hoping that he would understand. When he opened his mouth to her it didn’t matter, not as long as his tongue was moving against hers.

“I cannot feel you, but I can taste. You taste of a summer’s evening in India, the air hung with spices.” He licked her throat; she could feel him against her pulse. He licked between her breasts and she barely breathed as she watched him. When he moved lower, though, she squirmed. His tongue circled her navel; surely he couldn’t be intending to move any lower.

“Next time I will taste you everywhere. It is a memory I want to keep, when taste is one day denied to me. This time, malyishka, I want to watch you as you come.” He watched her, head raised away from her belly, as he nudged her lace panties to one side. A single finger dipped into her entrance and came out glistening with moisture. He licked the finger clean. “Spices and musk. And honey.”

“Victor.” Her eyes were wide in shock. In none of her books had they talked about that kind of tasting.

“Such an innocent still, Belle. And yet you give yourself to me. Trust me, when I can do nothing but ruin you.” His hand was so warm against her, stroking her through the lace. She could feel herself getting wetter, making it difficult to focus on what he was saying.

“I share myself, because it’s what I chose.” She frowned at him. He did not understand that everyone else tried to mold her into something else, and he allowed her just to be. 

“You should have the whole of the world, and yet you chose this.” His finger once again dipped into her, but this time he slipped in deeper. Deeper than she’d ever dared to go, when she’d teased herself with her own fingers.

“I chose you.” He moved inside of her, a second finger joining the second, the sensation tight but the friction making her feel flushed and lightheaded. “I would have chosen you then, if anyone had given me a choice.”

“They were trying to protect you from the beast.” He did something, his thumb moving in a tight circle. Her hips thrust forward without warning. She had to bite her lip to stop from shouting. His fingers pulled her lip free from the hold. “No, Belle, I want to hear you. Each sound you make tells me how you feel.”

“I feel like I need more. Like I would take you in deeper if I could. You could touch me everywhere.” Her skin was flushed but she was too aroused to be nervous. 

“Soon enough. First, you will know pleasure.” He moved faster, if not deeper. Belle did not muffle the next shout, or the keening noises.

“I need…”

“Come for me, Belle. I can see how you need it. Come and let me see what I have only imagined it would look like, to see raw pleasure on your face.” His thumb against her clit and his words wrapping around her made it impossible to do anything else. She sobbed his name as she spasmed around his fingers.

Nothing she had done to herself had felt so intense.

Nothing had made her feel as embarrassed as she did when the feeling faded a little and she realized how much she’d lost control

“No, do not hide from me.” She could smell herself on his hand when he stroked her cheek, keeping her from rolling her head away from him. “You are always beautiful, but more so when your eyes darken and your skin flushes with pleasure.”

She couldn’t look away from him, but knew that her cheeks had to be burning red. “I’m not. I’m just…”

“Beautiful. Alluring. Haunting. I have spent a year, wanting to see you again. To touch you. To hear you.” He slid the lace panties down her thighs as he spoke, past her knees, and over her ankles until flicking them without thought onto the floor. “To know you, as no man ever has known you.”

“Let me see you, Victor. Please?” The wanting she had known before, the dull ache when she thought of him, was nothing to the way she felt now. She had never understood what it really was like, to make love with someone. Even as she’d made up her mind that she wanted Victor to be her first it had been more about controlling her own fate and hopefully bringing him some pleasure. It had never been about her own needs. Not until he’d touched her. 

“Yes.” His shirt joined her cast-off clothes almost immediately. The jeans took a minute longer as he stood to take them off, letting them fall to the ground. He was far enough away that she could not touch him easily, and he did not touch her. She felt more naked than she had with his hands on her.

“I know you can’t feel me, but does this still… I mean are you… do you…” He spoke of her own pleasure, not his own. She wanted more than that for him. He’d already given her so much.

“Am I aroused?” Renard pushed down his underwear before returning to the bed, kneeling beside her. He guided her hand from where she was half attempting to hide one breast, holding her at the wrist and not stopping until her fingers brushed against the first erection Belle had seen outside of an illustration in a book. “You do not have to ask if I want you, Belle, you can see for yourself. If I could feel I’m sure it would ache. I have desired you since the first time I saw your eyes were so much bluer than I’d imagined from your picture. You tried not to look scared, standing in the hallway of that villa with my men surrounding you. You said please when you asked me to send you home.”

“Thank you for not listening.” It was so strange, that getting kidnapped had been the best thing to happen to her. It had shown her a world her father had kept hidden from her. Parts of it were frightening, much of it was overwhelming, but it was all liberating. Belle took a breath and stretched out her fingers, daring to touch him without his guidance. She felt heat, and an unexpected softness as she stroked his skin.

“You should not thank me for taking your innocence from you in so many ways. The things I have done with these hands, they should burn when I touch something so innocent.” That didn’t stop him from touching her, tracing the fading marks where her corset had bound her so tightly. “I can not stand the idea of another man touching you like this. If I were to learn of such a man while I am still alive…”

“Please don’t speak of dying. Not tonight.” She covered one of his hands with both of her own, holding her to him as if she could keep him there indefinitely. She didn’t want another man touching her, but more than that she didn’t want to think of the terrible thing he’d told her about the bullet. “Tonight we are both alive, and both here.”

“Tonight our fate has already been decided.” He nodded and did not try to pull his hand away. “Perhaps it was decided long ago. How ironic, that the one woman I have most wanted is the only one I will never feel.”

“You can see me, Victor. I feel like I’m shaking from how much I need you to be with me. You can listen to me. Your hand is so warm against my breast and when your fingers were inside me I…” Belle bit her lip, finding it hard to express herself. A voice in her head kept telling her it was wrong and dirty to say such things, but Belle tried to silence it. This was for Victor. “I never knew it could feel like that. Like I couldn’t catch my breath and my head was spinning and I was free.”

“Belle.” His tone was one she could not understand, but his eyes were so intense she could not look away. Her hands tightened on his as she licked her lips.

“You can taste me too. Will you kiss me?” Belle breathed out slowly and when she drew in her breath his lips were against hers. His whole body covered her, his chest against her breast, his hips flush to hers, and his erection hard against the inside of her thigh. She felt a strange throbbing inside when she realized how close they were. Even in the breathlessness of the kiss she could not forget. Her heart raced in anticipation and a trace of fear.

“I must be able to trust you in this. You will tell me if it is too much, too fast, or if we need to stop. Yes?” His breath was like fire against her skin. “You will give me your promise?”

“I promise.” She raised her chin enough to kiss the scar at his temple. “I trust you too.”

“Spread your legs for me, Belle. You are still wet?” She could feel him moving, his knees between her spread legs, his erection nudging her pubic bone. 

Belle nodded. “Yes. I’m ready for you.”

“I’m beginning to think I’ll never be quite ready for you, golubushka.” He balanced on one hand, stroking her skin with the other. She shivered when his knuckle grazed over one nipple. Another moment and he shifted again, taking himself in hand and looking down to align himself to her entrance. 

When he looked up at her she nodded.

The pressure built more quickly than it had with just his fingers, the feeling strange and foreign as she felt herself being stretched. His thumb brushed against her as it had before, and she felt a flutter that made her gasp. Almost as soon she dug her nails into his shoulder. “Wait. Just… just a second.”

“It is too much?” His hips shifted as if to move away from her. Belle shook her head.

“Just new. I need a breath, nothing more. I want this, Victor. I want you inside me.” She took a breath and tried to make herself relax. The human body was meant for this, she had seen the diagrams and read the books. More than that, she felt it. She wanted him. “I’m fine now. You can, um, move.”

“I can only imagine how tight you are around me right now. I am a selfish man, and glad that no one has touched you like this.” The deeper he moved inside the shallower her breathing came. It was so tight it felt as if pieces of herself must be pushed away to make room for him. Maybe as it was meant to be, filling up the emptiness she’d felt too often. Some primal need had her canting her hips upward as she spread her legs wider.

“Please,” she keened, not understanding the need but knowing that something was coming. And then with one thrust he was inside of her completely, arms wrapped around her until his hands rested flat against her scars.

“Do not move yet. The worst is over, but you must let the muscles stretch. You are well?” He held himself completely still as he inspected her face.

“There was only a little pain. I felt too many other things to notice it. Honestly.” She kissed his chin, the only thing she could reach without moving. “No one else would have been so gentle. No one else would have cared so much.”

“I have told myself for a year that I should not care for you. It is impossible to do otherwise.” He would not listen to her when she said that she fine, but waited some minutes before beginning to move, first withdrawing slowly and then sliding back in. Belle’s eyes widened. It felt as if her body wasn’t in her control anymore. She moved without thinking, and could not seem to stop her eyes from fluttering closed occasionally.

“Is it possible to feel too much?” she asked, not realizing that she’d said the words aloud.

“Not if the feeling is pleasure.” He moved inside of her, and she could do little but hold on as her eyelids seemed shaded with thousands of colors and fireworks danced under her skin. It was the knife’s edge of pain when she felt something like liquid fire inside of her. She could not even think about silence when her body shook with her orgasm, his name on her lips. She was barely able to silence other words that threatened.

He held her as she trembled, and without a word pulled the blanket over them when the shaking slowed. “Sleep, Belle.”

She nodded, but despite the way she felt almost as if her bones and muscles were gone she could not relax completely. Not until he slept as well and it was safe to say the words that she’d held inside for over a year. 

“I love you.”


End file.
